Month: February 2019

My family has had a garden for as long as I can remember. It has been a big part of my childhood, and something that I can look look back on that always brings a smile to my face. My dad, Tom is always in charge of our garden, he puts in the most hours weeding, watering, and harvesting all the vegetables that we grow. He would always walk back to the house with his hands full of peppers, cucumbers, zucchini, and his hat full of cherry tomatoes because he’d always forget to bring a bowl out. The ongoing joke between my neighbors and my family is calling my dad “Farmer Tom” because he loves the garden so much, always holding a full garden tour whenever a new vegetable begins to sprout.

One of my fondest memories of the garden is the year the we decided to grow pumpkins. We didn’t have high expectations of the pumpkins because it is tough for a first time crop to take off right away. Regardless of any expectations, our goal was to be able to make at least one jack-o-lantern out of our home grown pumpkins. For awhile we had nothing, and we all grew skeptical whether we would get any pumpkins at all, let alone one big enough to carve. One day after school, my siblings and I come home to find my dad back in the garden, this wasn’t uncommon at all. After we set our bags down, there was a note on the counter from my dad saying to come back to the garden. We put our mud shoes on and head back. When we get back there, my dad eagerly shows us the pumpkins. There were 3 pumpkins, still very small, but it was the first life of pumpkins we’ve seen since we planted them. We are all excited to see them, but more excited to see the reaction of my dad because we knew how much he wanted a homemade jack-o-lantern. As time passed the pumpkins continued to grow, there was no sign of any rotting and the pumpkins looked very healthy.

The pumpkins finally were big enough for us to harvest them. Not only did we get one but we got three, one for my brother, my sister, and myself. To say my dad was happy was an understatement. I still vividly remember covering the table with newspapers, scooping out the insides of the pumpkins, separating the seeds from the orange goo so that we could make pumpkin seeds. Then having my dad help us all carve our pumpkins because it was just as much fun for us as it was for him. It was a day full of smiles and trying to sneak up on my mom to rub our gooey, pumpkin covered hands on her to get a laugh out of everyone. It is a day that I will never forget, and one that I hope to recreate when I have a family and I’m in my dads shoes.

For as long as I can remember, my Nanu (grandfather in Sicilian) has always been obsessed with his garden; from his eggplants and sunflowers, to his mint and cabbage. He would spend countless hours digging and weeding, making sure that every inch of his garden was alive and thriving. At the start of every spring my father and I would go help my Nanu in his garden, just about every other week or so. This was a tradition we held up for 17 years, until my grandfather was unable to care for his garden anymore.

One of my fondest memories from that time was when my Nanu introduced me to cherry tomatoes. It was my first time working in his garden, and me being the curious creature I was I just had to ask what every single plant was. Most of the plants already bloomed, and were showing off their bounty; the one that caught my eye was the cherry tomatoes. I asked my Nanu what these red and yellow balls were, and he laughed at me and asked me if I was born under a rock. We walked over to the plant and told me that they were cherry tomatoes. He plucked one off its vine and placed it in my hand. “Try it” he said, my four year old self was a bit apprehensive about this foreign object I was about to ingest, So I made my Nanu eat one first just to make sure it wasn’t poison. Once I concluded that I wasn’t about to die from food poisoning, I popped the tomato in my mouth. Believe me when I tell you it was love at first bite. It wasn’t my first tomato product, but it was my first whole tomato, my first plain and simple tomato. When my my Nanu wasn’t looking I snuck a couple more tomatoes in my mouth, and then maybe a few more a minute later. I had become obsessed. From then on every time I helped my Nanu in the garden he would always ask me to do a product test on the tomatoes, to make sure they weren’t poison. Which I can confirm they were not poison.

Throughout my childhood, I was often at my grandparents house in Carver, Massachusetts. At their house, they had many acres of land that my sisters and I would always love to explore. We would ride the golf cart my grandfather owned around all day to find something new to discover. On top of all the land they had, there was also about seven cranberry bogs. Every year, up until I was around fourteen or fifteen, my entire family would help harvest the cranberries.

Cranberries are harvested through a process called flooding. Each of the bogs is entirely flooded with around 15-18 inches of water the night before they are set to be harvested. Once the day came, my family would use these devices called water reels to help separate the cranberry from their vines. Then, my grandfather would climb aboard this giant harvesting machine and drive around the bogs scooping up all the cranberries. I can remember being amazed at the entire process and not truly realizing how much work went into it until I saw it with my own eyes. I usually only watched my dad, grandfather, and uncle really do all the work to gather the cranberries, but it was something I definitely looked forward to every single year. After all the cranberries are collected, they are loaded into crates, then shipped to Ocean Spray, the company my grandfather sold his crops too.

Workers harvesting cranberries at a bog. Credit: PublicDomainImages

This tradition was something that was always a long but fun day with my family. We would always end the day with a big dinner, and it was usually had a lot to do with cranberry flavored items. This is really the first memory I had to anything garden related really, but it was something that was kind of unique to me. Not a lot of people get to experience and see the actual process of this harvest, and it was always a great time.

I come from Lynn, a “small” bustling city with little to no area where a person can grow something. I say “small” because it is a mere 10.8 square miles wide, yet it has a population of 94,000 people. This causes there to be absolutely no room for a traditional farm. In fact, most people live in very cramped apartments or multi families that have no backyard. No one in the city has taken to farming because of this, so I grew up knowing nothing about agriculture. In fact, I didn’t even know pickles were cucumbers until this class enlightened me. If you asked my friends to name any type of crop besides the most common ones the answer will be I don’t know dude.

The city of lynn (credit city of lynn)

My father attempted to start a garden for a very long time, but the quite literal fruits of his labor were never too grand. The only fruits and vegetables he was able to successfully grow in my rocky, full of dead grass backyard were very small, often not quite ripe tomatoes and these strange tiny cucumbers. The only reason he was able to successfully garden was because he placed good soil he purchased into a crevice of a rock in our backyard that was a few feet deep. This was our garden, about maybe ten inches of prime gardening turf. Anything grown anywhere else in my house would immediately wilt and die like even the plants didn’t like the natural lynn soil.

At the edge of my property is the power lines, a long, not too wide strip of basically bare wilderness with trees that all look like they are close to death. In the back left of my house is a massive grey rock covered with moss, that has a flat top where one can sit. Behind this hiding spot, is a hidden gem. There are about three different wild blueberry shrubs where we can pick blueberries when they bloom in the summer. They explode with flavor into your mouth, and are extremely juicy. It’s strange in such a barren land these grow with such excellence. They are by far the highlight of the summertime, and they let us know summer is in full swing.

The power lines (credit Jack Carrol)

I’m lucky to have a small area where I can grow-most of the members of my community do not have this blessing. They would have to follow in Novella’s footsteps and become urban farmers, but in Massachusetts the growing season is drastically reduced due to the weather. Only hardy plants can survive here, unless they are summer harvesting plants. It makes it harder here, but people should still enjoy the simple, rewarding joys of gardening.

“Bon Bini!” A Papiamento phrase which is typically said when greeted by an Aruban. The story I would like to share with you is that of what I like to call, an endless adventure. Last year, I was given the privilege to venture to the Island of Aruba. Amongst what seemed like an endless time it took to exit the plane after arriving to Aruba, I was greeted by an arid climate, something that I was curiously surprised about. Provided that all the images that I gathered while searching Aruba, suggested that the island conveys a tropical climate.

Photo taken by: VisitAruba.com

Pondering the adventure that awaited me, I scurried to the service desk. While attentively glancing at the wall of brochures, a tour guide approached me and was happy to answer any pressing questions I had. Unquestionably, I blurted out questions I had ranging from the culture to the geography and finally the cuisine of the island. The guide attentively answered my questions and highlighted that the island is a melting pot of cultures which offers a wide variety of cultural delights. Enthused, my next thought was that I had to make a trip to the local grocery store to witness how the agricultural scene differed from our, unsustainable selection of produce. Surprised, I entered the grocery store and was greeted with the pungent smell of cheese. After talking to a few local Arubans, I learned that there is a heavy cheese and dairy demand for the Dutch-owned island of Aruba. Eagerly, I wandered over the produce section and got a fresh sample of cheese made that morning, delicious, I thought to myself. Next, I knew it was time to see what kind of fruits and vegetables that awaited in the following aisles. Cabbage, carrots, bean sprouts, tomatoes along with an endless selection of produce met my eyes as I turned the corner. I thought to myself, how do they have so much selection. I curiously identified from my background in taking Spanish that many of the items were outsourced from other countries. To think that a semi-tropical climate such as Aruba participates in the same corruption that The United States has been branded for, I was again surprised.

Photo taken by: Ling & Sons Super Center

Throughout the next week, I was able to observe and learn about the vegetation of the island given its diverse landscape. While on an eco-tour, I noticed that the island was populated with a unique, almost forced horizontal slanted tree. I later learned that this tree was called, the Divi tree, which acts as Aruba’s natural compass, always pointing in a southwesterly direction due to the trade winds that gust across the island from the north-east.

Being born and raised in Deerfield, MA, a prominent farm town in Western Massachusetts, there was never a day where I wouldn’t see a green John Deere tractor driving past my house on Main Street or anywhere in the surrounding towns. However, even though I was surrounded by agriculture, farmers, livestock, and everything else, I never got involved in that lifestyle. This past summer, my Mother and I drove past one of the sunflower fields on our way to a creamery to get ice cream one night. We stopped because the sunset looked perfect sitting on top of the sunflowers. One of the beautiful things about Western Mass, sunsets over farm fields.

Iris Flower (and a portion of my Mother’s finger, top right corner) in her garden next to our back steps.

Another place with beautiful flowers are in my Mother’s small garden that sits next to the front stairs that leads up into our sunroom/mudroom. I’m not entirely sure what kinds of flowers she plants, because they are never consistent each year. She tries to switch them up, except for her roses. She often takes pictures of her flowers, and posts them to Facebook when they are fully bloomed (and sometimes includes one of her fingers over her iPhone camera lens). Even though it’s clearly not a rose, her caption on Facebook said that it smelled like grapes.

A normal summer night for my Mother.

In the summer she likes to decorate our small gazebo with other flowers as well, in pots all over our patio, and hanging up on hooks that myself, my Dad and my Mother tend to all the time. We water them very frequently, especially when there are dry spells throughout the middle of the summer. Here’s a picture from a few summers ago that my Mother took while reading a book, as she usually does most summer nights.

A few years back, my auntie Tara and uncle Mark decided to start their own garden, lined with wire fence to keep the animals away from the vegetables and fruits they planned to grow. It’s been awhile now and their garden has been successful year after year, producing watermelon, cucumbers, green beans, peppers, tomatoes, strawberries, and much more. They have four kids, Cooper, Quinn, Cade, and Kellan, who all love to help with the garden, especially Cade who now has her own garden, but this particular garden is filled with fairies and flowers. She picked out and planted all of the flowers herself and decorated in between with fairies, little houses, and whatever else she felt fit for her garden.

Cade with her twin brother, Kellan, planting vegetables in the main garden.

When it comes time to start planting, my uncle Mark and cousins plan out where everything needs to go and start digging, the whole process taking them a few hours at least. Their garden is pretty big and well kept after and as you can see from the picture, its location is close to the woods so there’s always the occasional deer and rabbit spotting. They don’t have many issues with animals eating their fruits and vegetables though; the biggest issue is the bugs eating whatever they want.

As for now and the coming years, Cade’s fairy garden will continue to thrive, each year with different flowers and decorations. The main garden will also live on for many more years, producing some of the best fruits and vegetables I’ve had. Although my family may not have a garden of our own, we can always rely on my aunt and uncle to provide us with whatever we want from their surplus of produce they grow.

Going to Hawaii was one of those once in a lifetime experiences because of it’s great distance from the mainland. It’s colorful and deeply bio-diverse landscape passed by our every moment on our 10-day journey. It is also a place of contradictions, there are gated communities vs. where the locals live. There are certain places like Honolulu where every square foot is developed and there are places off the big island where nothing is going on for miles.

In terms of food that I ate I can recall a
variety of experiences. Because at certain portions in our trip my family was
staying at Airbnb, we primarily went grocery shopping for our breakfasts. Unfortunately,
we weren’t always able to invest in the local economy and my family just
settled for whole foods. Which imports a variety of foods that we are
accustomed to. This was our experiences at airport hotels and other similar
establishments. One unique thing about Hawaii is it’s long-distance from the
mainland. There are certain consequences because of this food have to be
imported from far off places. People pay higher prices for food and it’s a
higher cost of living if the essentials aren’t as cheap.

Is representative of consumer trash that can be found on some of the beaches

In contrast with our whole foods experience we
did eat from a variety of local restaurants. Unlike here where you might find a
Burger King, McDonalds or Wendy’s off the side of main street. There are a
variety of successful local restaurants that can be found off of the highways.
One of the surprising finds was a rather small looking restaurant which served
primarily comfort food with a local charm. What made the experience very
special was owners took their time and talked with us. Even pointing out
certain tourist attractions that we might have wanted to visit in particularly
a beach with green sand. When transitioning from one hotel to the next my
family didn’t prep ahead of time. So, we were hoping to depend on restaurants
but there were none open because it was Christmas. We ended up eating some Spanish
bread and vegetables from a local market. We were hungry by the end of the day
but it was more important that we contributed to the local economy. This
situation felt fairly equivalent to a story my parents tell each thanksgiving.
That in 1998 when me and my family first moved here from Belgium, we didn’t
necessarily understand thanksgiving. They thought that all the shops would be
open and they could eat something for dinner.
Surprisingly this wasn’t the case and my parents ended up buying food
from a gas station. In that way my trip to Hawaii let me accept different
cultural experiences that I hope to share with others.

Lexi (9) on the left and Molly (8) on the right gardening when they were younger

Like most kids, my two little sisters weren’t the biggest fans of fruits and vegetables. For young children like my sisters, Lexi and Molly , there are lots of different types of food they would rather eat then fruits and vegetables. I always remember sitting around my big rectangular kitchen table that overlooked our living room, and my mom would always have the constant struggle of having my sisters eat there fruits and veggies. She would have to threaten to take away there desserts or maybe even reward them with desserts in order for them to eat there veggies at dinner. This struggle would go on almost every night, however one day my mom found a solution.

My Dad and Molly (left) and Lexi (Right)

My mom thought the idea of growing veggies on our own, in our house would help my sisters eat more vegetables. It’s the relationship factor. When someone grows something there-self, they are rewarded with there own food and will be happy to eat it, especially kids. That is exactly what happened. My mom got my sisters to grow their own veggies like cucumbers and tomatoes right above our kitchen sink that overlooked our big backyard. This was a changing point in our dinner conversation moving forward! The talk around the table shifted from arguing about eating vegetables to bonding about our days and telling funny stories. Growing veggies helped my family become closer!

Lexi (9)

To this day my sister Lexi could eat cucumbers all day long. It gets to the point were we need to tell her to stop and eat something else! Every dinner I would look to the right of me and there they would always be! Her plate would be half full of cucumbers with her pile of ranch dressing next to them to dip into. The idea that my mom had of growing our own veggies helped my sister love cucumbers and eat more veggies! The relationship my sister made from growing her own food, made eating vegetables fun and a project! My family learned that growing our own vegetables and eating them made it more enjoyable and made ourselves proud in the results that came with it.

About 10 years ago I was living in Missouri with my wife and our rather vocal Black Lab, Buddy. If it could be properly barked at, Buddy had it covered and believe me, out in rural Missouri, there are a lot of things for a young pup to bark at. The barking could be incessant at times. We will revisit this feature a little later.

Buddy, fierce defender of the realm

We were renting a house out in the country on about four acres, surrounded by trees, fields, cows, and not much else. Life was pretty good. Our first spring there we decided to attempt a small vegetable garden in the Missouri soil, which in actuality is more of a sticky, red clay and requires a slight departure from traditional garden bed prepping. I tilled down as deep as I could, and brought in some topsoil and compost to help bulk things up. After this, I mounded everything into neat little rows, and started planting. We planted various types of tomatoes, squash, peppers, lettuce, sunflowers, onions, and carrots. Just like anywhere else, some vegetables grew well, others, not so much. Tomatoes, which love hot and sunny weather, thrived and I soon found myself having to get creative in order to support plants that were exceeding five or six feet tall. Sunflowers also fared well, growing to seven or eight feet. Carrots, we discovered, when planted in clay soil have a tendency to grow about two inches long, and about four inches wide. If anyone has a desire to grow carrot pancakes, dense clay soil is key. All in all, we were looking at reaping a pretty good harvest.

Our first attempt at sunflowers

Now, as I mentioned earlier, Buddy was a bit of a barking enthusiast. Early one morning I was jolted out of a deep sleep by the deafening sound of….silence. I sat up and looked around the room, no Buddy. I got out of bed and stepped out into the living room, still no Buddy. I turned the corner and there he was, sitting by the sliding door in the dining room, attentively surveying his domain. I followed his gaze, and then I saw them. My dog, who will bark at a buzzard flying half a mile away, had not let out a peep about the dozen or so cows now tromping through our garden.

A few of the garden crashers

The damage was extensive- pepper and tomato plants uprooted, my neat little rows flattened, and cow crap everywhere, but we learned some valuable lessons that morning. We learned that cows enjoy a nice country garden just like anyone else, and we also learned that a fence will protect that garden much better than a cow-shy Black Lab.